How a Beagle almost ruined my life.

Six months ago I started my " I need a puppy" campaign. This campaign turned out to be successful, because I wound up getting the puppy I so badly wanted. However, success does not come easy. Success is defined by how many times it took you to fail before you achieved your desired outcome. Here is my story about how I failed while trying really hard to succeed;

I guess I must have seemed really sad, and desperate in my pleading for something to love. So rather than knock me up, Mike ( boyfriend) got me the dog I had been obsessing over. The dog he bought home, was not just any dog, it was a Beagle.A used one. Now, to me Beagles are not real dogs, they are just soft things that make excessively loud noise. Still I was excited at having something to feed my pop tart crust too and watch re runs of clean house with.

At first, I thought I loved the Beagle. she was cute. It stopped there.

 I was irritated by her constant need to smell things. It was overboard. She needed to smell every thing, it went on for hours. Licking floors, and licking the couch, and getting her head stuck in stupid places because she was to dumb to understand the whole 'square peg round hole" scenario. I would get angry simply watching her. She would smell the same 3 inches of kitchen rug for eight hours straight. This made me completely fucking insane with hate.  One day she jumped onto my coffee table and drank my glass of chocolate milk. It's all I could think about for a week. You drank my mother fucking milk, THE LAST OF THE MOTHER FUCKING CHOCOLATE MILK. I realized at this point that my hatred for the dog was becoming a problem.

A few months go by and the dog seemed to have adjusted to it's daily routine which was; Steal food,shit, piss, smell, smell, lick, smell, smell, scream, scream, scream, SCREAM, SCREAM MORE. These probably sound like typical dog things, except for the screaming But I assure you they were not. Let me ask you, have you ever had a fire truck break down in your living room? Did that fire truck blare its siren at full volume for hours making you want to aspirate vomit into your own lungs just so you could die and not have to hear the screaming siren any more? Well, I did. Except it was not a fire truck it was a fucking Beagle. The noise never stopped. Every day I died a little bit inside from it. Nothing we did quieted it, in fact the things we did to try to quiet it made it louder.  

Every day I panicked a little bit more at the thought of having this animal in my house for another 7-9 years. What had I done? Why would I think I could grow to love a Beagle? I can barely tolerate the alarm clock in the morning, and I can shut that off. A Beagle never shuts off. They scream you to your grave.

 I began to avoid the dog. I started to become obsessed with googling things like " I hate Beagles" " My beagle is an asshole" " fuck you Beagles." The Beagle was a  Cancer that was ravaging my entire being. I felt confused and betrayed by my own hatred. I had always been a dog lover, I would cry for dogs in kennels, and in pet shops. I trained dogs for several years, groomed them, loved them.  What was happening to me? who was I becoming? Did I no longer feel a kinship with Diane Keaton in the move " must love dogs?"

For 3 months I pretended that I loved the dog, in the hopes that the whole " fake it till you make it" idea would actually pan out. It never happened. Eventually I just gave up and started trying to re build my life around the Beagle. I was broken inside.

My hatred for the dog got to a point that I no longer even wanted Mike to love it. I would constantly point out it's "flaws" to him. Mike is the normal one in our relationship so he just disregarded it when I said to him " the dog smells things to much, don't you find that annoying?." I think he knew better than to indulge my psychotic criticisms. Every time that he interacted with the dog I wanted to destroy the entire Universe. Why did he not understand that this animal was the bane of my existence?

The catalyst for my complete failure as a dog owner happened on a  Tuesday night at 11:00PM. I was getting ready to climb into bed and I notice the sheets are wet. I ask Mike, " did you spill something" he said no. Now, I know I'm forgetful, almost destructively so, but I'm positive that I have not climbed into my bed and pissed on my own sheets and forgotten doing it. So what would it be?

It dawns on me. Never in my entire life have I ever been so completely engulfed by rage. THE DOG PISSED ON OUR BED!   To be sure Mike smelled it. He looked like knew this was going to send me over the edge and reluctantly said  "yeah, it's piss." I ripped the sheets off the bed in what I can only assume looked like a fit of roid rage. How dare you  I say.  This is so fucking disgusting., I NEED TO GO TO SLEEP. Not being able to go to bed at my regular time only infuriated me further.

Not long after this episode I knew I had to tell Mike how I really felt about the dog. One night I go up to him and I say " I hate the dog." He probably already knew this but he engaged me in conversation anyway.  "Why" " I just do, I hate Beagles" " I want a pit bull." Seeing as the Beagle had no social skills, I knew it was not possible to have 2 dogs. She would try to destroy any other dog that she came across, yet another reason why I loathed her. Mike's response was " your insane," That was all I needed, I went to work placing adds on craigslist entitled " Beagle needs a good home." She would soon become someone else's nightmare.

It took a while for someone to finally answer the ad. A dyslexic girl drove down from levvitown and picked up the dog. She was really late, and at first I thought she was not coming but she explained to me the GPS had got her "turned around" Out of curiosity I ask her what address she had written down, because she called me 5 times to verify where I lived. She showed me the paper with my address. Funny thing was, all of the letters that are used to spell my address were there, they were just in a different order. Where the B was supposed to be stood an R, where the R should have been now was something that looked like A. My street name is Belgrade. She wrote down " rebelgrd" . I knew right then the Beagle was a perfect match for her.  As soon as the girl met the Beagle, she was all " awww wook at you super cootie puff" and I was like, "yep, shes a real angel pocket." The Beagle jumped into the girls truck and began to tear up a bag of snacks she had sitting on her seat. I was disgusted, but the lady thought it was cute. I handed her the leash. I felt like I had just given this woman AIDS. I felt guilty that I probably ruined her life with this dog but more than guilt I felt flooded with sweet relief.

They drove away and I never heard from her again. Thank God.

This was my first experience at owning my own dog. I failed at it. After years of teaching other people how to treat dogs, and train them, I failed at loving my own dog. Why did this happen to me? What had I done? Would I ever love a dog again? Probably. Just not a Beagle.